The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards

Written by Paul Holmes MP and published in View from the Commons on Fri 26th Mar 2010

My personal integrity and reputation for honesty are important to me. That is why I was delighted when Sir Thomas Legge and his team of accountants gave my expenses claims for 2004-2009 the all clear. I was obviously pleased when a BBC reporter could say to me on air in February that "my expenses claims were exemplary" and when the Telegraph last year rated me as one of the 'best value for money MP's in Derbyshire.'

That is why last year I joined 5 fellow Liberal Democrat MP's in referring ourselves to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards so that we could have an independent assessment of another issue. If we had not self referred this issue would not have been investigated. It did not involve claiming money from the taxpayer and so was not looked at by Sir Thomas Legge when he examined every expense claim made by every MP. Up to 15 Labour and Conservative MP's have not self referred over this issue and so still have not been investigated.

From my election in 2001 I rented a flat in London at a Housing Trust 20 minutes walk away from Parliament. In 2005 Conservative run Westminster Council unexpectedly sold out the 70 year old Housing Trust to a commercial American Company. The new commercial landlord offered all 1,000 tenants a compensation payment which I accepted. The money came from a commercial company, not the taxpayer, and I moved to a flat with lower rent followed by another flat with lower rent.

For those reasons I did not believe at the time that there was any issue. But as soon as questions were raised 3 years later about this, I and my colleagues self referred.

The Parliamentary Commissioner concluded that "we had made a serious misjudgement but that he could find no evidence that we had done so deliberately". The Committee on Standards and Privileges took further evidence and have ruled that "there was no significant extra cost to the public purse as a result of my decision" and that "I should apologise for my misjudgement and pay over to the House of Commons one quarter of the money I received from the American property company."

I have of course immediately accepted the Committees ruling -there would have been no point my asking them to investigate the issue otherwise. 10-15 Labour and Conservative MP's however have not yet had the integrity to do this. It is essential that all MP's are seen to do the right thing -and to apologise when they get it wrong.